


Bright Day, Turning Tide

by hossgal



Category: Elfquest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-18
Updated: 2006-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hossgal/pseuds/hossgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep beneath two moons and the night sea, Brill dreams of sunlight and dry sand. Set just before the events of "Discovery", and spoilery for both that and "Wave Dancers". 4,700 words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Day, Turning Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Thanks to Lilith and Florastuart for beta. Request was: "I'd like a Brill/Sunstream story for my Elfquest request. Something sweet and light. Could be either pre-Discovery (i.e. their first meeting) or later. Er. Rated PG-13 or below, please. "
> 
> Written for Veszelyite

 

 

A clear night sky curved over the ocean's surface, the shimmering lines of phosphoresce meeting the reflected glow of two moons, both high and near full. The wave-edge gleam met moonshine, joined and then parted again, leaving behind the trace of stars beyond counting. The waves rose and broke against coral, mixing pale foam with the ethereal phosphor light, before moving on, the wind pushing the crest toward the horizon.

Deep beneath the moonlight's reach, the reef slept on. Night was welcome to few of the creatures that called the coral home - more of the small things that crept and swam and clung along the jumbled mass of rock and freeform limestone feared the darkness than welcomed it. And even the predators - the fierce-eyed brightteeth, or the many-armed graspers - favored the day more than the shadows.

The clan of elves that claimed the jutting rock of Crest Point were beyond the ambitions of such smaller hunters as brightteeth or graspers, but they too, slept away the hours between daylights. Tucked away in a score of niches and grottos, they drowsed, singly and together, as the darkness wore on.

In her bed of kelp and sand, Brill lingered on the sheer line between waking and dreaming. Her body wanted sleep - she had worn her limbs to weariness, tracing the edges of the Crest home waters. That very morning she had slipped away early, and dawn had found her already out of sight of the Crest. She had pushed herself throughout the day, swimming steadily against the edge of the Coldcurrent, until she had passed the edge of the sand floor. The Deep had opened beneath her, then, wide and frigid and full of secrets, and she had turned to follow the sandy rim until the sunlight slanted low and red through the water, and she had turned for home.

She could swim from the Crest to the South Ice and back again, but it would only exhaust her body, and leave her mind as restless as it ever was. Tonight her thoughts had ranged as far as her body, and found as little to content them.

Her thoughts were no more able to net what she sought than were her wanderings. She wanted...

Brill curled tighter in upon herself. Even in the darkness of the grotto, she would not voice her desire. Even in the clamor of her own thoughts. She had said the words over and over, she had begged chance and fate, had wept in the arms of her oldest friend.

_I want a child._

Her longing was a familiar companion - as old as the lovemates who had left her, each in their turn drawn away by the storm of Recognition. The tides changed and the seasons came and departed again, and still she ached for this. No matter that she slept alone, that she had no lovemate to distract her from her thoughts. Even if she had one - sweet Spine, so foolish and so dear, or Skimback, whom she had loved for so long - the joys of joining were only bittersweet - a rough shell, with neither meat nor pearl within.

It was a kind of madness, she knew. It ate at her, it set hard lines on the faces of the other elves. _You've all but driven your people away, with your sighing and weeping._ It was the nature of the sea-elves to bear pups from Recognition, or not at all - as much use to wail against the Coldcurrent and demand it change its path, as to beg for a child without a Recognition-mate. _You have ever known this. The tide goes in, and it goes out again. Be patient._

It was her own voice in her thoughts, speaking sound advice, as sensible as her birth-sister Krill, but twice as reasonable. _Be patient._

Brill had been listening to that voice for seasons past counting. She was beyond weary of it. And yet that voice - as much a part of her as her fingertips - was no more likely to be silenced than the endless motion of the waves was to be stilled. _Be patient,_ she counseled herself again. _Moons change, tides change, winds change. Be patient._

Against her inclination, Brill felt her thoughts ease, begin to slowly follow her body down into sleep. For a time yet, she lay, still drowsing and undreaming, as her mind ceased its thrashing and quieted, began to sink into dreams.

It was then, when her mind had grown quiet and her heartbeat slow, that she felt the brush of strange thoughts against her own.

* _Brill, beautiful Brill..._ *

Strange, but no stranger. Brill knew the timbre of those thoughts, the pattern of the mind behind them. Her disquiet washed away, swift as that, at his call.

* _Sunstream!_ * She reached out, not with her hand, but with her heart and mind, sending her thoughts as she slipped free from her sleeping body. Out, now, moving between the currents as though they were no more than air, Brill searched for the visitor.

* _Here, beautiful one,_ * he sent, come to meet her in the same manner, no more substantial than a beam of sunlight, and yet as real as the water around her.

* _You came!_ she answered, and laughed at the amazement and delight in her own thoughts. His laughter tickled at the edge of her mind, joining hers.

* _Of course. How could I not?_ * And then he was touching her, astral hand to the thought-form of her hair, and all the world was light.

***

The first time she felt the stranger watching her, she had been gathering kelp strands at the edge of the grove, sunlight falling golden between the dark green vines. Krill, declaring herself bored with strand-cutting, had left before the water lost its night chill, intending to find a fat spiner or three in the depths of the grove.

* _Will you be safe, sister?_ * Krill had teased, and Brill had waved her away, her hands already reaching for the next strand before Krill had disappeared into the thicker stand. Brill had not been sorry to see her go, for Krill's boredom was ever infectious. But even after her sister left, Brill found herself moving slowly. The tall vines held the water still, warm and thick - not stale, but thick. She had been sleepy, and the warm water and the beautiful sunlight had only made her drowsier still, and the slow roll of the waves passing overhead bumped her against the vines. Finally, she had tied the bundle to a strand twice as wide as her arm and herself to another, and wrapt her arms about herself.

 _Just for a few moments_ , she had told herself. The season for brown dagger-teeth was long past, and there was nothing else for a sea-elf to fear in the kelp stand. Krill was within sending range, and would warn her if a storm came up suddenly, or a bark-back of dry-landers. It had been as safe as any day could be, for a sea-elf. And she had been so sleepy...

She had not been sleeping well, as of late. Day after day, she had swum far and fast, leaving behind both friends and home as she wandered, returning at night to a grotto over-full with other elves, and yet far too empty. Her thoughts, chasing through the same channel again and again, were as worn as her body, and her heart weary as well. But still, night would fall, and sleep would not come.

_Please, I want a child._

The old ache, that time never healed, and which woke now and again, throbbing like an old scar. She pushed it away, hugged herself closer. It was warm, she wanted to sleep. Like a hide-fast tucking down into its shell, Brill curled closer into herself, arms and thoughts both tight about her center. Like darting minnows, her worries streamed past and then away, leaving her at last to rest.

She had woken with something - some _one_ watching her, close enough to touch.

She had lashed out - one panicked kick that left her twice as tangled as she had been - before she jerked her knife free and slashed through -

nothing.

She had hung there, staring about at the wavering kelp, leaves thrashing in graceful arcs as the water slowly settled back into the long waves of the sand flats. Brown-gold algae - shaken loose from the nearest kelp strands - hazed the water and coated her gills as she worked for air, her heart still thudding in her chest.

She was alone. It was all she could do not to broadsend, crying for help like a lost pipling, and flee the forest for Crest Point.

But she was Brill, long past a youth's fears and a youth's excuses, and if she was not the fierce hunter that her sister was, she still had sufficient pride to hold herself back from panic.

She had seen it - _him_. Seen _him_ , an elf-youth, one she'd never seen before, with hair as gold as daylight, and skin brown as the beaches east and south of Crest Point. _Seen him_ , as clear as water in a tide pool. She'd opened her eyes, and he'd been _there_.

The water had cleared, eventually, and showed the kelp grove as empty as it had been when she'd dozed off. She swam slowly through the forest, quartering up and down the thermal levels, until Krill returned, a pair of spiners at her belt. Her face set like a wave-washed rock, Brill had collected her bundle and together the sisters had swum slowly for Crest Point.

 _Perhaps I'm going a little mad._ It could happen, and terrified her more than any of the great killers, or any 'lander.

The Broken One had gone out, exploring beyond the edges of the sand shelf, out into the Deep, and he had come back, twisted and broken in body and mind. _It could happen to any of us._ And there had been Surge, gone missing for so many years, his heart weighed down with grief.

 _No._ She'd lost, nothing, not yet. Skimback had not been hers to keep, nor had any other. She had lost nothing. Not even a child. _Past foolish, to mourn a pipling you've never held, and imagine it matches a lifemate of a hundred seasons._ If she were imagining strangers with hair the color of sunlight in shallow water, then she was spending too much time brooding. Who knew what she would conjure next - a sea-friend with lavender stripes? A shell-back that flew?

She would not dwell on the thoughts of a child, but would think of other things, and so keep her mind clear.

When Krill would have asked her to share the spiners, though, Brill had only shaken her head, and left the deepwater caverns for Near Rock. There she lay half in, half out of the water, and soaked in the sun until it sat like a red eye on the horizon.

She could not have said, if any of her people had asked, what she had thought of for those long hours. But none had asked.

The niggling fear of madness had kept at her, and hung over her still when she found her bed.

When the stranger had come to her again that night, gone out from his true body and speaking to her as she dreamed, it had been with relief that she remembered him, and gave him her name.

***

He used it now, sending to her, a communication far more telling than speech, more honest than a face, more intimate than a shared breath. * _Brill, bright one, it is good to see you again._ *

He no more saw her than his hand touched her cheek, his fingers curled against her chin. They had both left their bodies behind them, sluggard flesh unable to keep pace with their flashing thoughts. Once more, Brill marveled at her companion, at the strength of the magic in him. _So young, so strange, and yet wondrous._

The sane voice of her thoughts spoke then. _Wondrous? This youth? You may be indeed going mad, despite this magic-working._

Brill laughed - at her thoughts, in delight, at Sunstream's touch. * _And you, sweet Sunstream. You are as welcome as daylight, as any bright thing beneath the waves._ *

* _Are there so many shining things?_ * Sunstream's sending carried with it a wide smile. * _I see this one thing of beauty -_ * And again he touched her hair, traced her brows with one fingertip * _\- Can there be anything more lovely to my eyes?_ *

She turned her eyes away, delighted and at a loss for words. With a catch at her arm, he turned her back to him. * _Please,_ * he sent, and suddenly she remembered how young he was, saw the way he hesitated, fearing her displeasure. * _Please. You have shown me some of the wonders of the ocean. Will you show me more?_ *

Once he had asked, there was no question of her refusing him. She swam, leading him, up out of the grotto and into the calm waters on the lee side of Crest Point.

 _How many days will be enough? How many seasons?_ Brill wondered as she swam. Sunstream matched her pace, his shining head at her shoulder. She had lost count of the times Sunstream had come to visit while she slept. From the first, she had found herself thinking of him in terms far more...open than she had used with any other lovemate. They did not touch skin to skin, but their thoughts melded like two pools of water when the tide returned.

And yet, every time, there was a moment of hesistation, as she both marvel at him, and feared his strangeness. For all her delight in Sunstream, she still had a sea-elf's native caution, and shied away from bringing him to the rest of the clan. _Not enough time to be sure,_ her sensible voice warned her, and for once Brill agreed. _Oh, he is lovely, and my heart's delight, but I know so little of him, who comes from so far away._

They rounded the far end of the reef, where the edge of the Coldcurrent brought a rich flow from the depths of the Deep. Rich with life, and with the creatures of the sea, but chill to those who swam with their skins about them.

* _We would find it cold, hard on our bones, if we were truly here,_ * she sent to Sunstream. * _But now, we can watch, and tarry as long as we like._ *

* _But we are truly here - as true as if we breathed, or more._ * Sunstream sent. He was not watching the reef, or the school of bumble-stripes that danced over and around a cluster of soft-legs. Instead, he was watching her. * _There is no lie a send may tell, and the body you see here is as it is in my heart. Bright Brill, dear Brill, how can you think I could be more than I am now?_ *

She shook her head. * _I - I do not want to doubt. And yet I do. Oh, Sunstream, you have told me so much, of your people and your world. And yet, how can I know waters I have not yet swum?_ *

He stared at her, then his eyes focused past her, eyes widening in alarm. * _What is that?_ * One hand made a motion, as if to pull her away, until he remember they were spirit, and not flesh.

When she saw what had seized his attention, she understood his concern.

A sand dagger-tooth - large for its kind, but still less than half the size of the great browns - made its way up the edge of the reef. Smaller fish scattered before it, but the dagger-tooth did not stoop to give chase to such paltry prey. Its fixed eye ran over them, not even sensing the presence of the two astral forms.

Drawing closer to Sunstream, Brill sent,* _A dagger-tooth, out of the Deep. If we were in our bodies, it might give pursuit, but the sand dagger-tooths favor flatsiders more than anything else._ * She smiled at him. * _Are you glad, now, that we are not more "truly" here than we are?_ *

Sunstream grinned back but did not answer, his gaze still on the dagger-tooth. The hunter moved up current, slow ripple of its tail moving it against the flow. From Sunstream's mind she caught an image - a fuzzy heavy pelt, protection against sand and dry air, scales but not scales - a fuzzy -

* _shaggy_ * he sent, amused, and opened his mind more, to show her the creature he remembered. * _Shaggy, not fuzzy, except as cubs - piplings._ *

A _shaggy_ creature, legs flashing, following a scent, across wide horizon of sand and stone. Narrow muzzle, pointed like a sea-friend's but eyes that were harder, more dangerous.

* _Friend_ *, her beloved thought. * _Wolf-friend._ *

 _Wolf_. She rolled the word around in her mouth. * _Safe?_ *

Through the ether, she could feel him laugh.

* _No. Not safe. Hunters. Killers._ * He hesitated, then added more. * _Family._ *

She had not expected that. _Family?_ With - with _beasts_?

She thought she kept her mind serene, but he flinched at the suppressed gasp. He would have backed away - _fled_ \- but she grasped his hand, and he let himself be held. With another look back at the dagger-tooth, she drew him away, up to the surface, where the water broke against the coral outcropping. There, sitting as close as they could, astral fingers woven together, they sat for a time without speaking, watching as the moons crept across the sky.

* _You - you haven't told me about your family._ * It was clumsy and fumble-fingered, but she could not think of an easier way to begin.

* _They are your family as well. We are all children of the High Ones._ *

She laughed, shook her head at the image of scores upon scores of elves - tall, short, pale, bronzed, laughing, fighting, speaking, all at once. Crowded all throughout the gleaming palace that was the ancient, long-forgotten elf-home, the faces flickered before her mind, one after the other, more elves than she had ever seen in her entire life. * _Too many, my love. I'll never know all those names! Start with one._ *

He thought, then sent, * _All right. You first._ *

 _Brat_. She caught her lip between her teeth, thought. There was not any question in the matter, though. She brought a face to mind, sketched out the rest of the elf's form, and finally added a name.

* _Krill. Sister, twin, I-not-I._ *

 _Bright, flashing, ever-questing. Never satisfied. Never content._ Brill let the image fade away, kept the love, the warmth.

Sunstream grinned and brought a face to his mind, of a young elf-girl, with the same slanted eyes and same tawny skin as her beloved, but with sunset-red hair and Krill's swagger.

* _My sister. Ember. She is...far away._ *

* _You miss her._ *

* _Every day. She -_ * And the next was something deeper than sending, something below thought. A memory of darkness, like a cave, near the surf, because there was a steady boom and shrrissh that echoed all around them - all around him, and the other, curled close around each other, fingers tangled, and all round them warm and tasting of salt...

_oh_

She felt him shake himself, pull back, taking the memory with him. Still stunned, Brill fumbled after coherent thought.

* _Your twin, before you were born. You remember..._ *

* _Don't you?_ *

A dream of a shadow of a memory, less than a reflection on the water's surface, gone as fast as it came. * _Many many tides since...it has not been so long for you, then?_ *

* _Two eights and two turns of the seasons._ *

Her astonishment leapt out, bright as a sea-friend breaching the surface to spin and dance before falling back to the depths.

* _I - are you - my heart, tell me, does this displease you?_ *

She started to reassure him, stopped herself. He did not mean only his youth. She would do him the courtesy of a considered reply. Brill released her hold upon him, but stayed within the circle of his arm, as she thought about his question.

* _No,_ * she sent, finally. * _No. I have years and regrets enough for us both. You are..._ * she let her touch brush against his cheek, down his chest, across his hip. He had no breath to catch, no face to blush, but she could feel the hitch in his thoughts, the way he turned his face to her touch, reached to draw her closer to him.

* _You are so beautiful, my love._ *

When they drew apart, she rested her head against his. * _There are so many things I do not know. And so much to show you. But please, be patient with me. I -_ *

She could not give voice to her own terrors, but retreated to the safer fears of her people.

* _We face such dangers here, every day. Dagger-tooths and 'landers and storms, and our own natures. And always, there is the Deep, and the things unknown that dwell in that darkness. I want to trust you, my heart, but I am afraid!_ *

* _shhh, shhh, it will be well, it will be well_ * And now he was comforting her, the _pipling_ was holding her and rocking her against the ache of things said and unsaid, and the incongruity of it only made her throat tighten more. She tried to push him away, but he did not allow it, only held her as close as their spirits could mesh, and murmured nonsense words at her until she was calm again.

When she raised her head, still dry-eyed, Sunstream smiled back at her. * _You have shown me so much of your world. Let me show you the place where I was born, the village I thought of as home, before I found the palace._ *

Brill nodded. * _Tell me, tell me everything._ *

He lifted both hands, brought them together, and then, slowly, slowly, parted them. Light poured from between his hands, flooded the air between them, driving into the reef, shattering it and turning the world into a barren plain of burning heat, thorn, and sand.

Sunstream held her, or she would have fallen. It was a nightmare - the heat, the parching air, the blinding light. She could feel her skin drying, felt the moisture stripped away from her gills and lungs. The queer flatness of the landscape struck her eyes, made them ache with the ugliness of the empty world.

But in his memory there was no room for anything but beauty.

Slowly, she let him draw her with him, deeper into the vision. The heat never left, but her eyes grew accustomed to the blazing sun. Then he passed a hand over her head, and Brill felt a light veil fall across her hair and shoulders.

* _There, does that help?_ *

It did - the blue-green cloth was soft and sheer, but the cloth cast a welcome shadow on her heated skin.

She swallowed, sorted her thoughts into asking a question. * _Is this - is this where you lived? With your family?_ *

* _Yes. Come, let me show you._ *

They passed through the village - a scattering of rounded humps and thorny plants, the homes painted colors to match the sky and bright hills. Beyond, he drew her up into the mountains, until the hills rose high on either side, and the air was hot and still.

She stood with him in the canyon, and stared. Golden and ivory, the walls of stone reached for the sky, so pale and clear, a blue that she had never seen from the ocean's surface. The silence was terrible and nearly absolute. There was a hiss as sand trickled from a high ledge and the sigh of wind in a thorn bush, but nothing else.

It was empty and echoing and strange and without any match in her memory.

After a time, it began to fray around them, and he turned away, to lead her back to the village. As they descended, she held the edges of the turquoise veil, letting it flutter behind her.

* _This is - thank you. This cloak feels like a shadow, light and refreshing. A pool I may carry with me._ *

He smiled at her. * _It is very like the one my mother wore, when I was a cub._ *

She searched his face, looking for traces of that elf-woman, for the molding she would have had on his flesh, his spirit. * _She must have been beautiful._ *

* _She is._ * The desert and the sand were fading away. Sunstream put out a hand, tugged at a corner of the cloak. It slipped free of her fingers and pooled on the ground, a sea-colored ripple that spread wider and wider until it reached for the horizons. She could not tell when it reached the edge of the sky, for her gaze was lost in Sunstream's eyes, in the feel of his face between her hands, the silken strands of his hair in her fingers. His breath touched her lips. * _But you are more lovely still._ *

And then he was slipping from her hands, faster than the cloak, and all about her was darkness and cool water and home. Brill clung to the memory of his hand in hers for a moment more, then fell back into true sleep.

***

She could not say how long she slept, only that she woke with his words in her thoughts.

_We are all family, all of us, beloved._

Brill stretched on her couch, the water chill with morning and thick with still-staleness all about her. It only made her drowsier, more content to lie, stone-limbed, and unwilling to wake. Content to consider the possibilities.

_Beloved._

She was not, Brill knew, without anyone to call her so. She had Krill, and Spine, and Skimback, who loved her still. She was not alone, here in Crest Point.

But the thought had a different flavor, when the one who sent it was Sunstream. She could remember the feel of it, trembling against her mind.

_We are all family, all of us._

He meant more than simply _all elf-folk_. He meant the brightteeth and the sea-friends and the great _shaggy_ beasts of the land-forests. The idea was... _a little mad_ \- no, that was insufficient. The concept opened beneath her like the Deep, dark and unknown. He dared, he dared too much.

_Beloved._

A little mad. But not alone.

Beyond the mouth of the grotto, the water was pale green with morning. A school of bluegolds darted past, with a pair of rosemouths tagging along. Night was past, the reef was waking.

With a lazy push, Brill left her bed, pulling for the surface and the rising sun.

When next Sunstream returned - and it would be _when_ , not _if_ , he would return, sure as the sun broke over the rim of the world each morning - when he returned, she would show him her people.

 


End file.
